Baltimore to pay about $8M in police corruption settlement
BALTIMORE – Baltimore officials are set to approve a roughly $8 million settlement to two men who went to prison after drugs were planted on them a decade ago during an encounter with members of a rogue police unit that brutalized, robbed and falsely arrested residents.
The city’s spending board is scheduled to take up the settlement Wednesday, news outlets reported. The Board of Estimates has approved several settlements in recent weeks stemming from the misconduct of members of the Gun Trace Task Force, a once-lauded group that was supposed to take guns off the streets of Baltimore.
The settlement for Umar Burley and Brent Matthews is the largest settlement in connection with the task force and surpasses the amount paid in 2015 to the family of Freddie Gray, a young Black man who died a week after he was critically injured in police custody and whose death lead to civil unrest.
The proposed payment includes $6.3 million for Burley and Matthews as well as $1.8 million to pay off a lien due to the estate of Elbert Davis, which sued Burley.
A French peacekeeper and Czech officer also were killed, and a sixth American on the helicopter was injured.
The Army said the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Lebanese general was in Syria over missing American reporter
New York.
CRAIG RUTTLE/AP
BEIRUT – A top Lebanese security official said Saturday that he visited Syria for two days to speak with officials there about American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing in the war-torn country since 2012.
Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim did not give further details in an interview with the local Al-jadeed television channel, but he is believed to have discussed Tice’s case with U.S. officials two weeks ago in Washington.
“After my visit to Washington, I went to Syria for two days and discussions over this matter are continuing and will continue,” Ibrahim said.
Tice, of Houston, disappeared at a checkpoint in the contested western Damascus suburb of Daraya on Aug. 14, 2012. A video released a month later showed him blindfolded and held by armed men. He has not been heard from since.